President Trump took aim at presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Thursday, targeting comments that the former vice president made the day before on the country’s Black and Latino communities.
Biden made the comments while being interviewed by teleconference as part of the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists joint virtual conference.
“What you all know, but most people don’t know, unlike the African American community, with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community, with incredibly different attitudes about different things,” Biden told the panel Wednesday.
Trump on Twitter said that Biden’s remarks had lost him “the entire African American community.”
The president spoke further on what Biden said right before departing the White House for a trip to Ohio on Thursday.
“I just watched a clip and Joe Biden this morning totally disparaged and insulted the Black community,” Trump told reporters unprompted, without elaborating on which clip he was referencing. “What he said was incredible and I don’t know what is going on with him, but it was a very insulting statement he made.”
The Trump campaign also seized the opportunity to ream Biden.
“The condescending white liberal racism that oozes out of Joe Biden is disgusting,” Trump campaign senior adviser Katrina Pierson said in a statement. “Now he arrogantly tells a group of Black reporters that ‘you all know’ that Black people think alike. There’s a reason Joe Biden can’t count on the support of Black voters and it’s because of his plantation owner mentality.”
She continued, “President Trump has a true record of helping Black Americans, with unprecedented economic opportunity, record funding for [Historically Black Colleges and Universities], criminal justice reform, and support for school choice. Joe Biden would rather we all just shut up, get in line and know our place.”
Biden campaign senior adviser Symone Sanders responded, telling The Hill in a statement: “If you look at the full video and transcript, it’s clear that Vice President Biden was referring to diversity of attitudes among Latinos from different Latin American countries. The video that is circulating is conveniently cut to make this about racial diversity but that’s not the case.”
Speaking at the annual National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) conference Thursday afternoon, Biden made a similar statement, adding that Latinos are of varying ethnic and racial identities.
“We can build a new administration that reflects the full diversity of our nation and the full diversity of our Latino community,” Biden said. “When I mean full diversity, unlike the African American community and many other communities, you’re from everywhere: from Europe, from the tip of South America, all the way to our border with Mexico and in the Caribbean. [Latinos are] of different backgrounds, different ethnicities, but they are all Latinos.”
Biden historically has a track record of favorability among Black Americans, and polling in recent months have shown that he has a commanding lead over Trump with Black voters.
In a recent Economist-YouGov poll, 76 percent of Black respondents said that Biden had their vote, while only 12 percent said they would vote for Trump. Biden’s advantage with Hispanic voters in the poll wasn’t as stark, with 54 percent of Hispanic voters choosing him and 24 percent picking Trump.
– Edward Moreno contributed
Updated at 5:17 p.m.